Diary: December 15, 2002

Real History and Judges, Cannibals, and History

The interviewer claims that Wilfred von Oven is ‘totally unrepentant and, chillingly, the idol of a new generation of neo-Nazis.’ The
Mail on Sunday seems to be easily chilled.

November
28, 2002 (Thursday), London

Baker Tilly [the liquidators who seized my home and possessions on May
23] are furious at finding that I only gave copies of the Churchill desk diaries to Churchill College (they have tried to seize them back).

I write to them: “In approximately 1970
I hired the Churchill desk diaries for twelve months for a fee of £5,000
from their then owner. During that time they were photocopied and microfilmed.

My memory is that in about 1971 their surrender was requested by the Treasury
Solicitor, or that I negotiated between the Treasury Solicitor and the then owner for their transfer, or that at that time I donated a set of copies to HM Government
— at any rate the originals passed lawfully out of my possession at the expiration of the rental period; that is over thirty years ago and much has happened since then.

On August 21 last year I donated a set of the prints to
[the archivist at] Churchill
College, to complete their set. The remaining set is among my research files which you have seized and whose early return I have requested, failing which, as
I notified you, I shall have to ask for a
Court Order.”

To the Public Record Office until 7.
Brainwork really is exhausting. I read straight from the original files of telegrams between London and the 1943
Teheran conference, which form a very useful spine for the relevant chapters, and create predraft in its rawest form.

I also pick up the copy of the entire
Aumeier file, which I shall now begin processing for the Internet.

November
29, 2002 (Friday), London

Out at 8 to take Jessica to school; big day today, her School Play. She is obviously pleased when she hears I shall be in the audience. A copy of the
Aumeier file goes to Fritjof Meyer at
Der Spiegel, to whom I write:

Erstaunlich, daß die
Historikerschaft davon wenn
überhaupt so wenig Gebrauch
gemacht hat. Meines Erachtens ist sie
wichtiger als die Aussagen
von Höss, die ja erpreßt
wurden (obschon einiges auch in dieser
Akte darauf hindeutet: u.a., daß
in den Handschriften die Ortsnamen usw.
in Großen Buchstaben in
echt-British Army-Stil geschrieben
werden.

Auch daß die letzten und
auch buntesten Aussagen unter Aufsicht
des bekannten (brutalnotorischen)
britischen Oberst Scotland
hergestellt werden: War Crimes
Interrogation Center, Kensington,
London. Die Akte stammt ja aus seinem
Nachlaß. Dort wurde gefoltert,
geschlagen usw. — was bei der Gestapo
noch als „verschärftes
Verhör” gebilligt wurde.

Ich habe
die ganze Akte kopieren lassen (nicht
ohne Schmerzen, denn es kostet fast ein
Euro pro Seite bei uns) und
beabsichtige 3/4 davon im Internet zu
veröffentlichen, entweder als
Abschrift (html) oder als Image (pdf).

I HAVE been looking forward to the School Play and at 2 p.m., properly dressed up, Benté and I take a taxi to the Carisbrooke Hall next to the school. There seem to be thousands of infants dressed in gaudy Aladdin costumes, what fun.

6:30 PM a lengthy conversation with
Counsel, who has spent the day on perfecting the court transcript
of the May 5, 2000 hearing, that is, perfecting the passages we need. He is now better informed and more optimistic. The
Court will not like having been lied to.

A stranger [with a Greek name]
donates
$10 and tries to get the password to the dossier on the forthcoming legal counterattack (“Mr Irving, I am a very recent contributor to the Fighting Fund.
Please give me the password so I can decide.”)

I return it to him, two fivers in an envelope: “Your contribution is welcome, but the rules on disclosure of privileged documents are very tough and this Opinion is still a privileged document, so I shall have to revert your contribution to you herewith.”

I have commenced predrafting
HIMMLER on the basis of the Public Record Office (Brian
Melland) file. As the skeleton of a skeleton, so to speak. In the first two pages we have three widely separated dates of birth for him. Work until midnight on this interesting task.

December
1, 2002 (Sunday), London

A reader compliments me on posting the
Aumeier documents, and spots already major anomalies with the conformist story. I respond:

Yes, I am posting the entire
Aumeier file as a service to the other
lazy historians. I hope they choke on
it!

December
2, 2002 (Monday), London

Up at 8 and take a singing, dancing
Jessica to school. We talk about cabbages.
“They are so uncivilized,” she says in her
Sloane Streeet accent. I work for an hour more on the Aumeier dossier posting, which is already very handsome and complete. I write to Robert
Faurisson:

This is the complete British
dossier on Hans Aumeier, who was deputy
commandant at Auschwitz for a while. I
am doing this to preempt the conformist
historians. I still have work to do on
the dossier; 3/4 of it is posted, but
we shall get the bigger files uploaded
in 2-3 days, and I hope that people
will volunteer to convert the German
handwriting into typescript.

This is the way to do things!
yesterday’s Mail on Sunday features an interview with “Hitler’s last loyal soldier”, Wilfred von Oven, who lives in Argentina. The interviewer claims that Oven is “totally unrepentant and chillingly, the idol of a new generation of neo-Nazis”.The Mail on Sunday
seems to be easily chilled. Oven comes across as an old man never happier than when reminiscing about his friendship with the Goebbels family.

Scores of books – in German,
Spanish and English – line the walls.
The first to catch my eye is Auschwitz:
Mythos. Three copies of Adolf Hitler’s
Mein Kampf sit next to books by the
discredited British historian and
Holocaust denier David Irving.

The Mail on Sunday was never my favourite newspaper. I can live with their insults.

I HAVE mailed to Werner
Grothmann a copy of his lengthy
Interrogation by British Intelligence a few days after the war, with this letter.

Ich schreibe, wie Ihnen
vielleicht bekannt, allmählich
über Himmler
— und höre Sie wohl schon
stöhnen. Ich war schon vor
dreißig und mehr Jahren bei Ihnen
und dem seligen Herrn [Max]
Wünsche wegen meiner
Hitler-Biographie. Ich will Ihnen heute
nur hallo sagen, und auch einiges ab
und zu schicken, wenn ich darauf
stöbere.

In London habe wir im
Staatsarchiv über H. eine
große Akte (d.h. sogar
verschiedene, die während des
Krieges angelegt wurden). Und siehe da,
darin ist die anliegende Vernehmung
über Sie zu finden. Hiermit als
kleine Aufmerksamkeit von mir, und mit
den besten Wünschen für das
kommende Weihnachtsfest (Julfest?).

Grothmann was Himmler’s adjutant (I interviewed him already back in the 1960s); he and
Heinz Macher who died last December were with Himmler (right) at the moment of his arrest in May 1945. Himmler had gone to the trouble of putting on a black eye patch as a disguise, and to shave off his little moustache; but his two companions, Grothmann and Macher, had changed only partly into civilian clothes.

As the photo in the Sunday Graphic
shows, they were reluctant to part with their magnificent (and expensive) floor-level leather greatcoats, as seen in countless Hollywood movies on the Nazis, so they probably rather stood out from the flood of wretched refugees crossing the
Elbe to get away from the Russians.
Grothmann was born in August 1915 but these ex SS officers seem to have had an above average life expectancy.

December
3, 2002 (Tuesday), London

Up at 8 a.m., Jessica to school. I write to my attorneys in the coming actions:

I do not accept that the
culprits can honestly have believed
that all our valuable possessions were
simply being abandoned. I think that
they or their agents looted what they
wanted and destroyed the rest: Tens of
thousands of pounds’ worth of private
possessions.

We are talking about a
four piece drawing-room suite, full
suites of bedroom furniture and linen,
clothes, completely installed kitchen
and equipment and utensils, not to
mention my own priceless and
irreplaceable documents and card
indices.

The culprits were fully aware that I was 5,000 miles away. […]
There are so many parties involved, that I cannot at this stage see whom I shall have to claim against.

In the main coming action Counsel expects a case-management hearing before
Gray J before Christmas, the substantive hearing in January.

Hannah, an undergraduate student at University
College, tells me she is writing an essay on the subject of my libel action against Penguin Books and
Deborah Lipstadt. (Hannah and, to judge from my emails, thousands of others). “I would be very interested to learn what you consider to be the most important lessons for contemporary historians to learn from the trial.

” It is a good sign that they take the trouble to ask for both sides of the arguments.

December
4, 2002 (Wednesday), London

Up at 8 and take Jessica to school through the dirty London drizzle. I now have no raincoat, so it is an ordeal; but being with Jessica for this half hour is such fun.

The morning mail brings Counsel’s skeleton argument for The Final Gavel. A message of thanks goes to him.

I see myself already sitting
on a beach in Bali. I have posted all
the items in the password-protected
area of the website
(“skunkfight”) for my friends to glee
and gloat over.

Only one suggestion. That you add to the quotation from [Penguin attorney] Mark Bateman’s
Times article not just the text, but also the headline: ” PENGUIN
MAY BE £2 MILLION DOWN BUT THERE
WAS AN IMPORTANT PRINCIPLE INVOLVED,
SAYS MARK BATEMAN.” Can deceit go further?”

5:30 PM David Howard of Channel
Four TV phoned, would I assist on their programme about Hitler’s alleged escape to South America? I scoffed, told them of Gregory Douglas [Peter
Stahl] and Otto Günsche; he: will come for lunch on Friday.

I have changed the password to
[…].

December
5, 2002 (Thursday), London
– Cambridge – London

Take Jessica to school; her ninth birthday today. In the car I say to her,
“You have given Mummy and me nine very happy years.” She corrects me, it is not exactly nine, that was at midnight last night.

At Churchill College in Cambridge all day reading Admiral Sir Bertram
Ramsay’s private diary for 1944. He headed the naval side of the 1944 Normandy invasion, oops, “liberation.” It is an inch thick notebook, written in a tiny hand and using a wartime Utility pencil script which reflects and vanishes under the ceiling daylight lighting.

I again —
just as when I read the Anthony
Eden diaries — find myself mortally depressed to be reading all the private thoughts and hopes of an admiral, long dead (killed in a January 1945 plane crash, I think). It is a real plod, but eventually the one-carat gems glisten through the pages, items which will be set in the final Churchill’s War, volume iii.
It will take two more days at least to read the rest of the yer’s entries. I leave Cambridge with a worsening headache.

I think leaking LPG propane in the borrowed car caused it.

Benté says there were four calls including yesterday’s caller of Channel
Four TV to cancel tomorrow’s lunch date (no doubt he has found out today that I am on the not-to-be-interviewed embargo list).

9:30
p.m. Mrs Ravit Z. phoned, a PhD researcher on Göring
and his trial. She has researched my
Göring files at the Institut für
Zeitgeschichte; wants more. I ask if her accent is German or Polish, she hesitates and says she is Israeli. Macht nichts.
They are the ones with the problem, not
I.

December
6, 2002 (Friday), London

Ravit Z. came for an hour’s lunch and talk on Göring and
Nuremberg. She is a 40-ish Marjorie Proops lookalike studying under Yehuda
Bauer and Hans Mommsen. I hope in return she can get Yehuda Bauer to make discreet inquiries about where the Himmler diaries in Tel Aviv now are.

Sadly, I discovered during the evening, opening the cupboard in the drawing room, that it does not contain the boxes of crystal goblets and wine glasses which I use every time I have a function, as Bente had told me it did, but only stacks of the cheapest Sainsbury’s glasses which I bought as reserves last time. The priceless stuff was evidently left behind.
She probably did not even realise they were there, high up in the cupboards at
Duke Street, out of harm’s way — or so I thought.

[A secretary] works until
10:30 p.m. Hair-raising. Everything she touches jams, crashes, and folds. At once time she is staring at the screen yelping that her text is disappearing, and indeed it is, as though attacked by the latest
Flesh-Eating Bug: her text is gobbling itself up, self deleting; she has hammered the DELETE key so hard it has jammed.

December
7, 2002 (Saturday), London

For supper I have bread and butter smeared with Marmite: a childhood treat.
Then more work on Himmler until midnight.

December
8, 2002 (Sunday), London

A writer from Australia comments on a
BBC Lord Reith lecturer who lamented that those pesky “Holocaust deniers” have seized the high ground — the Internet. I post the letter on the website with this mocking comment:

YUP, they’re just going to
have find some way of installing Mind
Control filters on the search engines.
Only people with special licences to
think will be granted permission to
look outside the area blocked off by
the filters. Otherwise youngsters with
inquisitive minds are going to keep
stumbling across us, the Real History
writers. The conformists are such a
lazy, self-satisfied bunch that they
haven’t bothered to set up websites of
their own.

I wonder incidentally what the august, fearsome and in everyway admirable Lord Reith, first chairman of the BBC, would make, were he still alive, of its present incarnation in which one-third of all presenters are now the obligatory
Black, with their hair braided into corn-rows and speaking a no less twisted mixture of Ebonics and Cockney or Sarf London, with blithe disregard for all the rules of grammar.

Having triumphed in capturing the low ground, the BBC is grimly holding out in the labyrinths down there, displaying a blind fortitude that would have impressed General Moscardo, defender of the Alcazár at
Toledo in the Spanish civil war.

What fun it is to be a writer.

I have scanned an old photo of my first four daughters on the beach in Spain in the
1970s. Paloma [No.2 from left, now in Madrid] thanks me for sending it and asks if I sent it to
Beatrice [the youngest] in
Brisbane, Australia.

December
9, 2002 (Monday), London

Quiet evening. Long call to Key West, trying to locate a missing package. A few days ago I was alarmed to see two or three envelopes reaching me, correctly addressed to our new home, despite having been stamped with an official-looking rubber stamp reading RETURN TO
SENDER. NOT AT THIS ADDRESS. It is a mystery.

December
10, 2002 (Tuesday), London

A recent package forwarded from Key
West arrives this morning, but not the missing one. There is also a letter from local postmaster, denying that the mystery rubber stamp is a genuine Post Office stamp. It seems I have enemies in the Post
Office. I wonder how much mail I have lost. The latest trick of the traditional enemy.

The school has its Christmas Carol service at St John’s. Jessica has one solo; she sings well, but without projecting her voice yet. It is difficult to suppress tears of delight at the sight of all these toddlers singing and walking in procession, holding hands, and the tinny sound of the piano jangling in the large and chilly church, and the parents’ obvious happiness at it all. Afterwards I stop by the headmistress, the formidable
Mrs H., and say, “Well done.

You must be very proud.” — “I am.” Two words, the only words she has spoken to us for years!.

THE Post Office is mystified by the fake cancellation stamp. I will not let it drop. I write them:

Thank you for your enclosed
letter. Please conduct further
investigation into who applied this
fake hand stamp reading
ADDRESS CHANGED, RETURN
TO SENDER on at least two
envelopes that passed through your
sorting office. We are now missing
mail. It appears to have been applied
maliciously by somebody, perhaps a PO
employee. You will share my concern at
the seriousness of such unofficial
tampering with the mails.

G B [bookstore] orders 35 more copies of “Churchill’s War”, vol. I:
“Struggle for Power” and vol.ii. We are now sold out of vol. I again.

At 11:20 PM this email to my lawyers about The Final Gavel:

I spoke with Counsel today. I
do hope that in a day or two we will
learn that this Application has been
duly lodged with the courts, and that
things will move ahead.

The grandson of a survivor of Disaster
Convoy PQ.17 writes me:

As the grandson of Captain
George Stephenson
(Hartlebury) we have only
recently learnt of the history of his
role in PQ17 and your
book on the subject (My father to
this day does not speak too much of
either his or his father’s war
service).

He concludes: “I would just like to thank you for your book and giving our family a look into the service history of our grandfather.”

I reply at length and say, “Stephenson, your grandfather, was a very brave man in my view.”

December
11, 2002 (Wednesday), London

I take Jessica to school (last day of term) then on to Cambridge. All day reading more of the 1944 Ramsay diary. I meet there
Gill B., the Foreign Office historian, who is now working on an authorised biography of Sir Desmond
Morton.

Morton, Churchill’s Intelligence adviser, was an interesting, enigmatic, character who like Brendan Bracken
(right, with Churchill) ordered all his papers destroyed at the end of his life. I have a long talk with her over lunch about Morton and sources. She has the considerable advantage of unrestricted access to British secret service archives, which, she intimates, has made her task possible.

She recognised me from last year’s (June) conference at the Public
Record Office.

December
12, 2002 (Thursday), London

All day at the Public Record Office.
Still on CAB.120. Man next to me reading the recently released Guy Liddell
diary [Liddell was wartime head of
M.I.5], which I must also look at.

December
14, 2002 (Saturday), London

Emails this morning include a death threat from one David Roberts (at
[email protected]) who evidently doesn’t realise he has included his name on his email system.

In the mail is a letter from Gisela
Grothmann. Werner died only a few days ago, she reports, at the end of November.
The funeral is on January 10, at Germering cemetery. It should be an interesting ceremony.

[Previous
Radical’s Diary]

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[This
is the early draft of a publication being
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